Help talk:SVG/Archive 1

Previous discussion

See Commons:Graphics village pump/November 2007#Proposal: an SVG How-to page for initial proposals for this page. ButterStick 23:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Version 0.1

I've put up a very rough version to get things going. Be bold and edit it, please :D The IP that's in the page history is me (I forgot to sign in before editing).

There is a lot of overlap with Commons:Transition to SVG, though over time I see this problem being resolved. ButterStick 23:41, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

To-do

Add things here...

• Colors
• ViewBox
• Image size
• Setting monitor to sRGB color space in order to edit for Web

Validation

This may not be quite so simple. A problem with validation is that it will not be successful without a DOCTYPE declaration, but a man who knows, I think, says here http://jwatt.org/svg/authoring/ that you don't want to do that. Globbet 01:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I know a lot of validators just mentioned the doctype missing as a warning rather then an error, also mention that it's not strictly needed for SVG1.1 /Lokal_Profil 00:51, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Metadata

I think it may be a bit too dogmatic strong to advise avoiding metadata. The recent discussion at Commons:Graphics village pump/November 2007#SVG Metadata did not really come to that conclusion, (or any conclusion, for that matter). How about saying something like "it is not necessary for Wikimedia use because ..., but can be included if you want to" but more elegantly expressed? Globbet 01:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it's good to have some metadata in your images. It doesn't take much space and can help in categorizing/finding/(re)using them. ZeroOne 11:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the comment about avoiding metadata (since there seemed to be no agreement). As for filesizes it's probably better to recommend using the "Vacuum defs" function in Inkscape. Or mentioning which default values certain parametrs have so that these can be removed by "search and replaced" using a text editor (inkscape has an unfortunate way of defining every possible parameter for say stroke even though only the width and coulour are desired) /Lokal_Profil 00:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Even though I personally don't like metadata in SVGs (totally a different issue than with formats that aren't human-readable), I support not advising one way or another right now. It's true it may be undesirable when editing SVGs to see them packed full of extraneous text, but I have to admit even I have found it useful in the past. In a few cases where I found some images I wanted to upload to Commons, there was no notification of the license—except when I viewed the source. Of course this isn't an issue for Commons, but once our images leave here it can be. As long as people tend to disregard what the license requires, there's a good case for including metadata. Personally, this isn't a good enough reason, but I know others think differently, so, as for an "official" stance on the issue, it's best to leave it up to the author(s). Some have their reasons for including it, some have their reasons for not including it. As long as it doesn't become excessive or cause copyright issues, I guess the rest of us can live with it. :) Rocket000 21:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

BTW, I should also mention I have found visible watermarks useful in the past, too. (Like when the uploader doesn't give the source, yet there it is stamped across the image.) You can see what I put about this on a related page, Ownership of pages and files (the last part). That's not SVG specific, but I think it's pretty much what we should be saying here (if we say anything). Rocket000 21:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

About adding new FAQs

Should I add new FAQs into the page even if I don't know the answers? I'm thinking of "My image has some unintended black boxes in it, how do I get rid of them?" and "My texts float into wrong places or show up very wrongly sized, how to fix them?". ZeroOne 11:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion you shouldn't.

• Slightly facetiously, a question is not a FAQ until it is asked frequently.
• And an unanswered question probably does not qualify as help.
• I don't think a FAQ is the best long term format for a help page. It serves well enough as an add-hoc, easily built arrangement, but it is not as good as a carefully laid out logical exposition of the subject.
• Individual questions are more ephemeral than I think we want here, and should be asked and dealt with at Commons:Graphics village pump: we need to be on guard against this discussion page getting cluttered up with questions.

On the other hand, this page is new and does not have a lot of content yet, so if it seems that the problem and solution would be of general help, then suggest it here for discussion, which may be slower but may allow several heads to ponder whether and how to add it, or, if there is an answer, work out how to explain it well and just go edit. This depends to some extent on how much editorial effort the page attracts. Globbet 00:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've asked the latter question twice and never got an answer. I've also asked the former question once and the same question is on Commons:Graphics village pump at the moment, too. But I agree that an unanswered question doesn't qualify as help... So maybe we could just list those questions on this talk page and then move them into the help page if they ever get answered. And yes, some careful prose is usually better than a list of FAQs, but for now the FAQs should do fine... We could also separate them into, say, Help:SVG FAQ and reserve this page for prose. ZeroOne 12:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Tutorial for Vectorial graphism

I have added a link to this page. It is interesting and partially overlaps the purpose of this page but I think it is archly named. Some of the stuff at the top introducing SVG might well be moved and adapted here, leaving the rest to be renamed as an introductory Inkscape tutorial page. Help:Inkscape introduction, perhaps. Globbet 01:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That tutorial looks and sounds like something that could be hosted in Wikibooks. The Inkscape introduction, too. ZeroOne 12:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's something else you may be interested in: meta:Talk:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests#FLOSS Manuals. I mentioned the Inkscape WikiBook there, but it's not much. There seems to be a lot of people trying to get some tutorials written, and there's definitly a need, we just need to start putting our resources together. Rocket000 21:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

No more SVG?

SVG-Pictures aren't renderd also they work with rsvg on my machine. Example: Image:Wertachtal.svg, Image:Netzwerkanalyse beispiel.svg --Mik81 16:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Problem found, external referenc to a second png-File. Inkscape doesn't want to import correctly --Mik81 16:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's best never to mix bitmaps and vectors. Rocket000 21:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Categorization

Is there rather too much detailed instruction on categorization in this article? I see no discussion here, who decided on the scheme, and on what basis? Would all this, if necessary at all, not be better elsewhere? Globbet (talk) 00:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

yes, I did it once just as a sum up of completely undocumented stuff - in fact its no kind of policy at all, and there was neither discussion nor decision at all, its just some hints about what we've got by now --W!B: (talk) 02:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

in fact, I'd suppose categorizing, as its done by now, for useless: to my feeling, there is no sense of ripping categories apart (by now you have to look up eg. both Cat:Maps of China and Cat:SVG maps of China to find a image you need)
I'd suggest to remove all SVG cats, and just tag {{SVG}}: so we could use CatScan in any category to find out which media is svg - whould be much more easy than mirroring our complete category structure in a SVG-branch, which always will be inclomplete --W!B: (talk) 02:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Stupidly, tag {{SVG}} redirects to {{Convert to SVG}}. The former should surely just be something informative about SVG, no? Globbet (talk) 22:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

scripted SVGs allowed or not?

The page states several times that scripted SVGs are not accepted; however, there are examples of scripted SVGs, e.g., Image:Ampel.svg. Shouldn't the text be adapted? --Martin (talk) 12:29, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I think they squeaked in before the Mediawiki software was changed to prevent them. I have tried uploading files containing scripts and not been able to, but do not intend to waste time trying to break in. I am no cracker, anyway. Ideally, of course, it is the software that wants to be adapted to let perfectly safe scripts in. Globbet (talk) 17:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation! --Martin (talk) 11:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

SVG-logo template from en

en:Template:SVG-logo Is there any reason to have a similar template on the commons? ~ Paul^C/_T+ 18:05, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

interesting presentation about Wikimedia and SVG

http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/svg-in-wikipedia-and-wikimedia-commons/ --Kolossos (talk) 22:37, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Inkscape problem

I'm running out of ideas regarding the ugly black rectangle in an image I've uploaded (repeatedly, by now...) at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sed_klasse1.svg - I gather from Help:SVG that

"Text in Inkscape by default uses a Flowed Text box which can result in problems (it will likely not render at all or render as a large black rectangle). To fix this, simply use the Convert To Text command in the Inkscape Text menu."

- but I've tried everything now: Converting to Text. Re-writing without moving my mouse. Converting to a path. That rectangle just keeps re-appearing in the same spot. (And yes, I'm saving as plain svg.) I'm using the newest stable Inkscape (0.46) on a Mac (Leopard). And this is supremely frustrating - I'm trying to get a bunch of images done for an astronomy article, instead I'm stuck uploading umpteen versions of the same stupid black rectangle. Any help would be greatly appreciated. As2Wi (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC) 

 Done, by using a text editor to delete an empty (and invisible and unselectable!) flowRoot and flowRegion rectangle that causes problems in Firefox 3.5.5 but not Opera. Somehow Inkscape left that element in the file even though it should have no effect as it contained no text. I guess that a Flowed Text box was created at the beginning, and the text inside was deleted, but that Inkscape failed to then delete the wrapper. To complicate matters Firefox's implementation of SVG fills the empty box with black. Google Chrome and Opera rendered all versions correctly. -84user (talk) 07:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Great! Many thanks! And it's good to know the way to get rid of stuff like this in the future. As2Wi (talk) 10:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)